death

i was thinking about this for the last while-- once a player dies, he is not playing anymore. this has been the common traditional mafia policy, but there have been roles that resurrect players, roles that involve activity while death, rules that allow strategic planning with alive teammates during death, possibly more. it's natural that players want to keep on doing something even while dead. furthermore, players that are very active during the game are usually killed as a result, and these players are usually the ones who want to keep playing the most, and really hate it when they die.

since we're already making steps that set us apart from traditional mafia regrading this subject, we might as well take it to the next level-- we give dead players a specific role that, obviously doesn't affect the game as much as an alive player would, but keeps them active and around and has SOME effect on the game, even be it something minor. this can be some sort of niche in certain games, there's not really a 'common tradition' to be made here-- it's case sensitive. this thread, however, is made to talk about two things: what ideas come up when discussing a possible 'role' for dead players? do we even WANT to 'nerf' death in that dead people actually still affect the game?

this thread, however, is made to talk about two things: what ideas come up when discussing a possible 'role' for dead players? do we even WANT to 'nerf' death in that dead people actually still affect the game?

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I'll start with the second question first. The main reason to kill someone is to remove them from the game, usually to cripple the other faction. That's why mafia prioritises killing the leader and power roles. All that's pretty obvious and I personally think it should be kept that way for the most part. However I have no objection to trying it in experimental games, although I think it would work better in bigger games because each player is less important.

In terms of what we want to have these roles do: depends on the game of course, although balancing these would be very difficult. Considering that in each game there is usually only one res ability (whether rogue, resurrector, etc) it doesn't have that great an impact. But if everyone has a death role then that would change things alot.

If people just got a new role, however bad, on death, then every game would be:
-N0: A leader annonces himself, and if there is a vig then the vig kills them.
-D1: If there is no vig, they are lynched, but either way die publically in time for:
-N1: The now cleaned leader receives claims from everyone and the village win.

The only ways to stop this are:
-To make people die properly the second time, in which case you just give everyone a bpv and reveal alliances, which seems to be a much better set of circumstances for the village.

-Not reveal the allegiance of dead players, which I know has happened before. However, this would probably help the mafia too much. I haven't played in one of these games, but it does seem very annoying for the players.

-Have people possibly change allegiance on death. This couldn't be the norm, because then when the leader is killed the mafia essentially win.

It looks impractical to me. I think that when people are dead they should stay that way unless you can think of a way of balancing it that I can't.

i didn't mean that players gain a specific role upon death. i meant that dead players in general have a 'role' in the game, ie affecting lynches or whatever. this can be anything and i'm trying to think of unique ideas for this.

and yes, keeping the importance of death is definitely to be aimed at. i AM talking about more experimental games.

how about that all dead players are disallowed from communication with the living players (like usual), but that all the dead players get to send in a anonymous message, and that either all players or a specific role receives all those messages, garbled or otherwise.

I played a game on another forum which was kinda aimed at this problem. Dead players cant talk to living players at all, even in their faction and they all are invited to a quick topic. Every day, which the normal lynch goes on, the players vote on someone to get a special power during the night. This helps balance the game in that if the mafia has a majority of dead people they can vote their team mates to get the power, whereas the villagers (theres no "village leader" concept there) have to try to vote for townies. It helps the game balance and makes it so that having good mafia finders die isnt such a bad thing as the villagers can benefit.